Dosbox For Dingoo A320

[bush520]

How to fill the screen, the word is really small, fullfixed parameters on the a320 is not used

 

[lenny81]

thank you for the great work, dosbox is really going to be my favorite software for dingux!
i have some questions, maybe you can help me:

- in "commander keen" versions 4 and up you have to press "Y" in order to leave. i think i have to wait until the on-screen-keyboard is released, right? or is there a workaround to type this letter?
- what means "keymapping"? means it, that i could create a file where i can say which buttons give which letters? (this could help to solve my problem with the "Y"-button)
- how to set frameskip? means the "#" in each line of the dosbox.conf that the line is inactive and i have to remove the "#" in order to activate it?
- anybody tried to run the classic dos game "stunts"? in my case it crashes everytime.

thank you for help (and sorry for my bad english)!

 

[slaanesh]

thank you for the great work, dosbox is really going to be my favorite software for dingux!
i have some questions, maybe you can help me:

- in "commander keen" versions 4 and up you have to press "Y" in order to leave. i think i have to wait until the on-screen-keyboard is released, right? or is there a workaround to type this letter?
- what means "keymapping"? means it, that i could create a file where i can say which buttons give which letters? (this could help to solve my problem with the "Y"-button)
- how to set frameskip? means the "#" in each line of the dosbox.conf that the line is inactive and i have to remove the "#" in order to activate it?
- anybody tried to run the classic dos game "stunts"? in my case it crashes everytime.

thank you for help (and sorry for my bad english)!

Yes you can use a mapper file "mapper.txt" to set A320 buttons to simulate keypresses.
For example, to map the left shoulder button to "y" key use the following your mapper file:

key_y "key 8"

The frameskip can be set in the dosbox.conf.
The "#" character at the start of a line means that the rest of the line is ignored. It's a common method to remove settings or to add commentry/documentation.

If a game crashes, try changing the core from dynamic to simple or normal.

The dynamic core should be the fastest, though simple can also be fast. Normal is the slowest but most compatible.

 

[slaanesh]

How to fill the screen, the word is really small, fullfixed parameters on the a320 is not used

Screen scaling is automatic. Sorry if the characters are small but this is a design decision I made when I ported it across.

 

[slaanesh]

Is there a verbose mode ?

...
A320  screen w640 height h400 bpp16
Segmentation fault
/boot/local/games/DosBox #

Once you get a Segmentation fault, you will have to restart your A320. SDL doesn't clean itself up and I've found you get strange behaviour afterwards.

Of course seg faults shouldn't really happen at all :-(

I will include more logging with the next version.

 

[lenny81]

thank you for your help!

the mapper.txt works great and now that i understand what "#" means i can configure everything.
but the game "stunts" is still not able to run, no matter which core i select. maybe the game is not able to run into an emulation, maybe it needs direct hardware access or something else, i dont know.

again, very nice software, thank you!

 

[Mortys]

Hi Slaanesh
With small value for the cycles,Dosbox run great for a lot of game but the sound is pretty laggy. In fact, the digital voice works well but the music itself is laggy and hard to hear. In addition, some games (ex syndicate or gabirel knight) say not enough EMS memory (asking for 897k). Is there a way to increase the available memory or is it lost for the NN ?
Except the sound issue (for me instead), it's a really great piece of homebrew !

 

[cddxhy]

I am waiting for the speed up version~~!


Thank you Slaanesh!

 

[xdpirate]

Thanks for this awesome port, slaanesh.

My question: Is there any way to have custom keymappings for each game?

Say i use

dosbox -conf game.conf

to launch games, with individual .conf files for each game/program, could I put the key mappings inside the conf?

The conf would look like this:

[autorun]
game.exe

[keys]
key_a "key blah"

Would this work? Or do I have to have the key mappings in the .txt-file? If you have to have the maps in the textfile, you could do something like this:

[autorun]
#mount and switch to correct folder goes here
copy mapper-gamename.txt mapper.txt /y
#switch to game folder
game.exe
exit

.. while keeping individual mappings in mapper-gamename.txt files.

 

[Exophase]

EDIT 2:
I change overclock to 336Mhz and rerun it and get the same results, but when I change cycles to 6000 in dosbox.conf I get 50.05Mhz in the CPU, so changing dosbox config is the way to get more speed.

But then I try Skyroads again, and any option I changes gets no extra speed,

This isn't what you think it is. 6000 cycles - ie, 6 million instructions per second if I understand correctly - will look like 50MHz to this benchmark even if you emulated it on a 10MHz machine. The benchmark has no way of knowing how fast the emulator is actually running, it can just see how many instructions are executed between some external event like timer ticks.

I think this benchmark is probably not very accurate with DOSBox anyway. It's probably using a much slower than average instruction that is emulated as taking just one cycle.

 

[slaanesh]

Hi Slaanesh
With small value for the cycles,Dosbox run great for a lot of game but the sound is pretty laggy. In fact, the digital voice works well but the music itself is laggy and hard to hear. In addition, some games (ex syndicate or gabirel knight) say not enough EMS memory (asking for 897k). Is there a way to increase the available memory or is it lost for the NN ?
Except the sound issue (for me instead), it's a really great piece of homebrew !

Have a look at memsize in the dosbox.conf
I think I set it to memsize=2
Try setting it higher but I was getting problems when memsize=4 (though I did clear some space so it may work now)
If that fails, try memsize=3

Otherwise you are stuck with memsize=2 as a maximum.

I know that on the A320, memsize=4 works fine, even before I went on my memory reduction crusade throughout the code.

For those that want to know, I reduce the dynamic recompiler cache down from 4MB to 2MB and reduce the default video card memory size from 2MB to 0.5MB

 

[slaanesh]

Thanks for this awesome port, slaanesh.

My question: Is there any way to have custom keymappings for each game?

Yes you can.

The default mapper file is simple called mapper.txt.
However within each dosbox.conf you can set a new mapper.txt file in the [sdl] section by changing the value for 'mapperfile'.

ie.
[sdl]
mapperfile=mygame.txt

So if you are launching a game, you will need to have two files:

Your game.conf (dosbox.conf is the default)
and game_mapper.txt (mapper.txt is the default), the mapper filename is set from within the game.conf file using mapperfile=game_mapper.txt

 

[slaanesh]

Couple more things


1). There *is* a mapper included in dosbox - you can access it by starting dosbox with the following argument:

dosbox -startmapper

DOSBox then starts in mapper mode.

This probably (I haven't checked) doesn't display anything on the A320 (yet) but it does display correctly on the Nanonote (in fact it was the first screen I saw on the Nanonote version!)

However, I still need to implement mouse emulation to make this useful.

Next test release will feature:

* Updated keyboard controls for the Nanonote. Some keys are currently not working correctly.
* Mouse emulation. Probably be a key to toggle between controlling the mouse and the keyboard controls.
* On screen keyboard for A320.

This should pretty much resolve most issues with controlling games/apps.

After that I'll look at making a release built for speed.

 

[Mortys]

Thx for the tips. I've already try Memsize=4. Dosbox aunch but seem to freeze when launching a game. So I'll try memsize=3 and maybe 4 later. That's a great news for the memory usage as it could make more games compatible with Dosbox NN.
Thx for your work

 

[Pickle]

This probably (I haven't checked) doesn't display anything on the A320 (yet) but it does display correctly on the Nanonote (in fact it was the first screen I saw on the Nanonote version!)

My guess its because that mapper is run in 8 bpp mode, and as far as i know 8 bpp doesnt work on the dingoo

 

[Mortys]

Slaanesh
As some other people, I think that (if possible of course) you should include an HDD indicator in Dosbox(maybe the power led if accessibled), as it is impossible to know if it's currently loading data or just crashed.
Have you notice that Alt+Enter switch the screen (on NN of course)for a blank one with the SDL/mouse cursor ?

 

[gibberish]

well i cant get it working, but i will perservere with it if crystal caves works.
has anyone tried crystal caves?

if anyone would be willing to give it a go, the link to the shareware version is here:
ftp://ftp.3drealms.com/share/1cc10a.zip

ta

 

[Mortys]

@Slaanesh.
Sometimes it seems that the screen don't refresh. Music is till working but no image and it seems that pressing Alt+entreee (switch to cursor mode and go back to dosbox rendering)speed up the thing a little bit. Meybe the Nn have some kind of undegoing process.. id don't know..

MAybe it's just my imagination or it's some strange behaviour of the NN ?
Got it with shadow of the comet.

I've try with Hero Quest. Definitly the screen refresh far after the music synchronize (it looks fine except for some little lag).

Slaanesh , Ive try to increase the memory and it seems to work (memsize =4) with the Simple core. It seems to work faster(and better) than the dynamic one.

I launched syndicate at what looks a good speed (intro). Loading are still long and can affect the game speed. it works as far as I can say it works. you can enter a mission but it's really slow and is unplayable until mouse emulation.

tie fighter demo. the game is damn slow (it's an evidence) but it works. Of coourse as the mouse emulation isn't implemented it impossible to start a mission.

Ufo succed to lauch and wait for mouse to go further...

Gabriel Knight launch but slow as hell


Some really cool news i found

 

[slaanesh]

My guess its because that mapper is run in 8 bpp mode, and as far as i know 8 bpp doesnt work on the dingoo

That's right. Actually the A320 uses 16-bit color modes and the Nanonote uses 8-bit mode which is then mapped using the DOSBox palette during the blit.
This works very nicely - I wonder if it's faster than the A320's mode? Most early PC games use 256 colors or less so it's probably pretty efficient internally.

As some other people, I think that (if possible of course) you should include an HDD indicator in Dosbox(maybe the power led if accessibled), as it is impossible to know if it's currently loading data or just crashed.
Have you notice that Alt+Enter switch the screen (on NN of course)for a blank one with the SDL/mouse cursor ?

I'll try to add the HDD indicator as an option in dosbox.conf.
Something may already exist, who knows? - i'll have a look.

@slaanesh.
Sometimes it seems that the screen don't refresh. Music is till working but no image and it seems that pressing Alt+entreee (switch to cursor mode and go back to dosbox rendering)speed up the thing a little bit. Meybe the Nn have some kind of undegoing process.. id don't know..

MAybe it's just my imagination or it's some strange behaviour of the NN ?
Got it with shadow of the comet.

I've try with Hero Quest. Definitly the screen refresh far after the music synchronize (it looks fine except for some little lag).

Slaanesh , Ive try to increase the memory and it seems to work (memsize =4) with the Simple core. It seems to work faster(and better) than the dynamic one.

I launched syndicate at what looks a good speed (intro). Loading are still long and can affect the game speed. it works as far as I can say it works. you can enter a mission but it's really slow and is unplayable until mouse emulation.

tie fighter demo. the game is damn slow (it's an evidence) but it works. Of coourse as the mouse emulation isn't implemented it impossible to start a mission.

Ufo succed to lauch and wait for mouse to go further...

Gabriel Knight launch but slow as hell


Some really cool news i found

Have a look at the following section in dosbox.conf:

[mixer]
# nosound -- Enable silent mode, sound is still emulated though.
# rate -- Mixer sample rate, setting any devices higher than this will
#         probably lower their sound quality.
# blocksize -- Mixer block size, larger blocks might help sound stuttering
#              but sound will also be more lagged.
# prebuffer -- How many milliseconds of data to keep on top of the blocksize.

nosound=true
rate=11025
blocksize=1024
prebuffer=10

Try reducing blocksize to 512 or 256.
Try decreasing prebuffer to 8, 6 or 4.

I'll look into the dyna-rec being slower than the simple core. The dyna-rec *should* be faster in most cases I would imagine (but not necessarily so).

 

[Pleng]

well i cant get it working, but i will perservere with it if crystal caves works.
has anyone tried crystal caves?

I have crystal caves working on my install.

Also can confirm that Monuments of Mars and Commander Keen work very nicely.
Jazz Jackrabbit fails And my eyes are not good enough to read the error messages, sorry!